Polar Bear forge

Earlier
this year I put a hiatus on lamellar. I had asked for people to
let me know if they are interested and I'd add them to my list.

There have not been a lot of people interested and at this time I am going to keep the lamellar on the back burner.

--Jamie

While
I was in school for machine tool technology, we built a few dies.
One of them was a bracket. It was very similar to some of
the lamellar plates that I saw some friends working with, so I started
building dies to punch out lamellar plates.

I ended up
changing jobs before finishing it, but the idea remained. When I
started running an industrial cutting laser a world of possibilities
opened up. If I could draw it, I could cut it. I started
making lamellar plates from stainless steel and aluminum.
Initially, I couldn't cut copper based alloys with that laser.
I just got done installing a new laser, and it is capable of
cutting brass and bronze.

Plate styles:

Here
is a sample of the plate styles that I have cut. Over the years that
have been many different modifications, moving a hole over a bit,
shortening a plate, scaling a plate, etc... I do not have all of
them shown. There are hundreds of modifications! I will do
minor modifications with no change in cost.

If you would
like a totally different plate, please send me a good drawing. A
good drawing is similar to the one above, black and white with
everything just as you would like it. It can also be a completely
dimensioned drawing, or even better yet, a dxf file.

Materials:

My
standard materials are 0.063" thick aluminum and 20g (0.0359" thick)
stainless steel. You can special order other materials (in the
past I have done 18g stainless, 18g mild steel, and 20g mild steel) but
remember the cost will be higher. I have bulk pricing setup for
my common materials.

Due
to spotty interest in the spring stainless, I am going to hold off on
ordering this material. I want to avoid having the material sit
around for most of the year as it has in the past.

My source for brass/bronze fell through. Evidently it shouldn't have been listed on the website at all.

How many plates do I need?

The
table below has estimates for the number of plates per square foot.
To get an estimate of plates, measure the amount of area on your
body you want to cover.

For example, let's say you
want to cover eight square feet. If you want to use plate
style #5, you would take the 8 square feet x 92 plates per square feet
and need 736 plates.

Plate #

Plate dimensions (in inches)

Approximate # of plates per square foot

1

4.250 x 0.875

84

2

4.250 x 0.875

84

3

3.825 x 0.875

84

4

3.825 x 0.875

84

5,5b,5c,5d

3.350 x 0.875

92

6

3.825 x 0.982

80

7

3.825 x 1.089

N/A

8, 8b

3.000 x 1.625

60

9, 9b

2.500 x 1.250

105

10

3.000 x 1.625

Variable

11

2.375 x 1.750

Variable

12, 12b

3.350 x 1.136

N/A

13

2.625 x 0.625

Variable

14

3.661 x 0.875

Variable

15

4.188 x 0.750

Variable

16

3.125 x 1.000

72

17

3.825 x 1.000

Variable

18

2.500 x 0.750

Variable

19

4.000 x 1.500

64

20

3.000 x 1.625

70

21

3.000 x 1.750

70

22

4.000 x 1.313

Variable

Note: Some plates are center plates, or vary based on lacing pattern and are labeled as either N/A or Variable.

What's New?

The spring steel is all gone.

At
this time I do not have any plans to get more material. The
interest is there are first and then the material sits around for the
better part of a year.